Heat exchangers can be found in many devices where cooling or heating of fluids, including liquids and gases, is required. The basic principle of any heat exchanger is to provide efficient transfer of heat from one heat exchanging material (e.g. gas, fluid, etc.) to another, without any direct contact between the two. Heat exchangers are commonly found, for example, in refrigeration units, power plants, air conditioning systems, among others.
One well-known type of heat exchanger is the Fin and Tube exchanger commonly found, for example, in refrigeration condensers. Fin and Tube exchangers employ a plurality of inter-connected tubes positioned within, and thermally-coupled to, a metal structure which is exposed to a flow of air. Often, the metal structure takes the form of a plurality of metal “fins” which run perpendicular to the inter-connected tubes and which serve to increase the effective surface area of the heat exchanger.
Fluid circulating through the tubes gives off its heat by convection to a flow of air passing through the fins. For certain applications, the flow of air may be forced through the tins by way of a fan. Clearly, the larger the heat exchanger, the larger the fan required to move the air for suitably affecting suitable heat transfer. As may be appreciated by those skilled in the art, despite being well known and used, heat exchangers employing fluid carrying pipes, such as those previously described, have a number of drawbacks. For example, in order to provide sufficient heat transfer for many processes, the interconnected pipes need to be many meters in length leading to the exchangers being relatively large in size when compared to the refrigeration unit (or an equivalent water cooling tower of the same heat load capacity). This in turn not only limits the range of sites that the device can be installed in, but also leads to appreciable manufacturing and operational costs.